Christmas is for Family, but New Year is for Friends
by ownedbyacat
Summary: Clint's take on how SHIELD's most senior agents sweeten their need to work on New Year's Eve. A fluffy one-shot with a dental hygiene warning! ;-)


**Author's Note:** A Very Happy New Year to you all - and thanks for all your encouragement since I've started posting fics. Between family and work I haven't done much writing during the holidays, so I felt the need for a bit of fluff hit me hard this morning. And I didn't resist - so please keep your toothbrushes handy, don't read when hungry or on a diet and forgive me for indulging my love of food and Clint Barton.

* * *

"... and then Nat casually pressed the start button on the washing machine," Clint declared with the widest grin he could muster. "You could hear the howling three blocks over. All the beautiful drugs down the drain."

"Did he survive?"

"The dealer?" Clint made a face. "I so hope not. He was a nasty piece of work." He reached for one of the skewered strawberries and dipped it into the pot of glistening dark chocolate ganache. The moan he let out on tasting the mix was only just this side of obscene.

"I didn't believe this would work," he said, mouth still full of Sitwell's latest treat. "But it does."

Their New Year's Eve meet up was a long-standing tradition. It had grown from working odd hours and returning from missions when most honest folk were falling-down drunk and singing to welcome in another new year. And while Christmas was for family, and they all took turns spending time with theirs, New Year's Eve was reserved for friends.

How they'd hit on puddings nobody rightly remembered, but the consensus was that it must have been the year they spent all night cleaning up after some minor disaster or other. Alcohol would have been a health hazard right then and when they finally finished their work the only food to be had were stale puddings from some miraculously unscathed diner. Sitwell had bitched about the questionable quality of the peach cobbler all the way back to HQ and even May was irritable and caffeine deprived enough by then to declare the lemon sponge inedible. Clint had merely been grateful for a few hours sleep and not having to greet the New Year with a hangover. The following New Year's Eve, though, they'd somehow decided on a pudding party – and it had stayed that way ever since.

And while few people understood it, many a junior SHIELD agent offered up prayers of thanks that the upper end of the agency's chain of command happily volunteered for work on New Year's Eve. They usually met in Coulson's office; setting out the treats each brought on the paperwork-free desk and settled down to some reminiscing. It was peaceful, it was friendly, it was even work if you squinted at it sideways.

"You're telling me you've never tried fruit and chocolate before?" Sitwell sounded incredulous. Clint just shrugged.

"Nope."

When it came to food, there were many things he hadn't tried. It came with the whole struggling to find enough to keep you fed gig he'd had going before he joined SHIELD. Which was why he enjoyed their treat nights so much. He'd never considered pudding an essential food item, so when money was tight, it didn't even make it near the list. He also didn't have Coulson's sweet tooth, so he frequented coffee shops for their coffee not their baked goods.

Because of all of that he'd had no idea that Sitwell was like a wrathful god when it came to quality chocolate; that Nat had a distinct liking for whipped cream or that Hill and May could create miraculous things from peppermint and lemon respectively. Coulson's choices were usually very traditional and over the years Clint had tasted bread and butter pudding with candied lemon peel, treacle tart and millionaire's shortbread amongst other treats. And of course it was no surprise that Nick Fury was the only one who ignored the one rule they'd set for their celebration. Whatever the man chose to bring, from strawberry trifle to sour cherry flan to a traditional English Christmas pudding, it held a generous amount of booze.

The talk was moving from Clint and Natasha's drugs bust to May's latest run-in with HYDRA somewhere in a Burmese jungle, and Clint leaned over Coulson's shoulder to survey their table of treats. They'd chosen a black and white theme this year and when Clint squeezed his eyes shut and squinted, Coulson's desk looked like a chequer board.

A large glass bowl of what looked like fluffy white clouds decorated with tiny wild strawberries sat next to Hill's dark chocolate and peppermint mousse, both surprising in their unexpected lightness and delicacy. On a normal day, neither woman's name lent itself to be paired with either light or fluffy. But when it came to desserts, light was obviously key and both made an excellent start to the evening.

Melinda May's contribution – next on the table – was a lemon and white chocolate tart, fragrant and elegant and with far more substance than its looks lead you to believe. Clint thought it a good representation of May, who could always pull a rabbit from a non-existent hat when it was most needed. The sparingly decorated pale white tart looked stunning next to the deep brown of Coulson's steamed chocolate surprise puddings. Clint had almost had a heart attack when he'd stabbed his spoon into the treat and the thick, shiny filling oozed out unexpectedly like the blood of an angered chocolate god. But it fitted Coulson just fine, like the banter they shared on their private comms channel or the coffee and comics the man sneaked into Medical when Clint was supposed to be sticking to soup and sleep.

Sitwell and Fury had managed the biggest surprises this year. Sitwell had just shown up with a few boxes of strawberries and a large thermos, when usually his contribution would be some outrageously elaborate chocolate creation. Instead he had grabbed two bowls, placed the strawberries in one and poured a little of the mix from the thermos in the other.

"Dip the strawberries in this and I'll promise you heaven," he'd announced.

And he hadn't been wrong. The dark mix exploded across Clint's tongue, a hint of salt and chilli teasing around the edges of the chocolate burn and the fresh taste of the strawberries made the flavours sing and mingle. Bliss indeed.

"Next time I'm stuck in some dreary desert with sand in places sand should never be, I'll dream of this," Clint huffed and popped another ganache-dipped strawberry in his mouth. Salt and chilli chocolate had never crossed his horizon, but Clint decided right there and then that this was an omission he'd remedy promptly in the following weeks.

The last pudding, a bowl of delicate, slightly wobbly, white unctuousness, was as unlike Fury as the Eton Mess had been unlike Natasha. Delicate and nurturing weren't really Nick Fury's watchwords, but as soon as Clint tasted the thing Nick called a posset, he understood. At the heart of it, the concoction made from cream and wine and honey was calming. A medieval remedy for cold and flu it undoubtedly soothed but it also had bite and power – hidden, but very much evident when needed. Once upon a time, Clint had compared Nick Fury to a marshmallow and the image hadn't felt quite right. This posset, Clint decided while finishing his second bowl, was a much better fit.

He leaned contentedly in his corner, snug between Nat on one side and Coulson on the other, and wondered when he'd gotten so lucky. From his rocky first months at SHIELD, when he didn't feel he'd ever fit, he'd got to working seamlessly with Coulson and Nat without having to explain his every move. He'd gone from haunting SHIELD's ventilation system when his empty quarters felt too lonely to sitting in Coulson's office with a bunch of people he considered friends, and from struggling to find enough food to survive to sharing decadent puddings just for the fun of it. Clint's life had changed beyond expectation. And if, in return, karma demanded he'd pay in blood, sweat, tears and missions nobody should ever have to go on for his good luck, he was ok with that.

Clint himself wasn't one for puddings. He loved spice, though, and hated to be cold. So his contribution to the festivities was usually a large tray of spicy gingerbread and a vat of hot chocolate laced with cinnamon and nutmeg that still packed enough caffeine to keep even the most sleep-deprived SHIELD agent alert. They would all share that after midnight, or maybe closer to morning just as they got ready to head home.

And that, for Clint, was the most miraculous thing about his life at SHIELD. That he now had a home to go to. And someone to share it with.


End file.
